Jerry
Crowe turns one of his burl wood art vessels on a lathe at
his shop near Cassville. Crowe, a former restaurant chef, sells
his turnings at gift shops and art galleries across America.

A 6-foot-tall chain
link fence surrounds Jerry Crowe’s woodshop
and office. The fence, a remnant of an emu operation that once boasted
$1 million worth of birds now protects a pet goat named Nancy and a
jumble of logs piled in the yard. Rustlers aren’t likely to recognize
any value in the knotty tree stumps but, under Jerry’s guiding
hand, the wood will yield valuable works of art.

A former chef, Jerry now earns his living as a woodturner. His wildly
figured wooden bowls, or vessels as he calls them, bring a premium
at art galleries and gift shops. Most of Jerry’s turnings, which
sell from $125 to $900, begin as a burl, a large wart-like growth on
the side of a tree trunk or root. Unlike straight-grained wood, each
burl reveals a surprising display of colors and designs.

“This has all kinds of unusual patterns in it. There’s
no wood that looks anything like it,” says Jerry, 69, who sells
his artwork under the name “Unique
Turnings.”

A Barry Electric Cooperative member from Cassville, Jerry rough cuts
these logs with a chainsaw and then mounts his wooden wonders on a
powerful lathe. Using turning chisels, some longer than his arm, he
carefully shapes the burls into vessels reminiscent of Southwestern
Indian pottery.

The unpredictable character of the burl wood, combined with the free-hand
guidance of Jerry’s tools, guarantees that each creation is one
of a kind. “I’ve made thousands and no two of them is ever
alike,” he says.

Jerry
left bark in place along the rim of this 8-inch hickory burl
vessel with malachite inlays. Photo courtesy of Jerry Crowe.

Jerry’s lathe spins a chunk of wood at nearly 1,000 rpm while
he skillfully guides a chisel across the surface, removing everything
that isn’t a bowl. A drill bit held securely in a Vise Grip begins
to bore inside the spinning orb, establishing the eventual depth. Jerry
gouges out the vessel’s insides with a hook-shaped chisel,
custom made by a local machinist.

While the artist’s hand is at work in every piece, the main influence
on Jerry’s turnings is the wood itself. Whether he’s
using oak, walnut, maple, sycamore, hickory, box elder, cherry or
apple wood, Jerry examines each log and visualizes the work of art
inside. His decisions about the shape or size of the vessel and whether
to leave natural defects or bark as part of the piece, are driven
more by the specimen in front of him than his own design.

“I don’t really plan. I make what comes out,” he
says. “You don’t really have too much choice, especially
on the burls. They’re going to be kind of what they want to
be. There will be big holes in it or it will be rotten here and there.”

A gaping hole in the side of a vessel only accentuates the imperfect
nature of wood and is a prized feature for many collectors. Small cracks
and other imperfections are filled with crushed stone. The ribbons
of turquoise, malachite and lapis he adds provide dramatic contrasts
to the color and tone of the burl.

Jerry produces
as many as 70 of his turned wood creations each month.

“Some of them are very striking,” says Mary Bowman, co-owner
of Peter Engler Designs, a woodcrafts gallery in Branson that carries
Jerry’s turnings. “You look at them and you wonder, ‘Oh
my gosh. How did they do that?’”

Jerry’s woodturning
skills are largely self-taught and came late in life. After serving
in the Navy and Air Force, Jerry returned to his native Cassville
and took over a diner his parents started in the 1950s. In time,
he owned three different restaurants in Springfield. After one of
his establishments failed, he accepted a position as a chef at a
hotel in Arizona. That led to another restaurant job in Hawaii and,
eventually, another on the western Pacific island of Saipan.

Jerry
and his wife, Anne, stayed in the Pacific for 13 years. It was
there he took up woodturning.

“I built
a house and I needed some spindles for a staircase,” he
recalls. “I couldn’t find any over there so I just thought,
well, I can make my own. I bought a lathe and started turning. That was
about 25 years ago and I’ve been going ever since.”

After finishing
his stairs, Jerry taught himself to turn bowls on his lathe. When he
came back to the states in 1989 he was finally able to meet and learn
from other woodworkers.

photo
courtesy of Jerry Crowe

“I went to
a symposium where they have turners from all over the world. I watched
them and I learned more in three days than I had in 15 years,” says
Jerry, who now teaches other craftsmen through area woodturners’ clubs
and an instructional video.

Back in Cassville,
Jerry tried his hand at emu ranching and operated another restaurant
in Cassville for a time. About seven years ago he closed the restaurant
and began turning wood full-time.

Today Jerry’s
turnings are sold in 36 galleries nationwide. He also attends a number
of prestigious art shows each year, where he sells his vessels directly
to collectors.

“They come
to these art shows and they’ll
pick up one that’s
maybe $500 or $600 and never look at the price on them,” he
says. “One
person might buy $1,500 worth of pieces. They buy them for wedding
presents, or to give to their friends or for housewarming gifts.”

Peter
Engler Designs in Branson carries work from other woodturners
but Jerry’s
art often outsells the rest.

Although Jerry guides his turning tools by hand, he says the
wood itself influences his decisions about shape and design.

“We have
carried other woodturners’ work
but his seems to be what people like,” says Bowman,
who typically offers 50 to 60 of Jerry’s
pieces for sale at any time. “The price is right, the
quality is right. He does it right.”

At least some of
Jerry’s success is due to the fact that many woodturners
don’t have access to the kind of wood he does. “There’s
no place else in the country that has burls like in southwest
Missouri here,” he
says.

While the character
of each burl guides Jerry’s
creation, he also has a knack for finding a beautiful
shape inside and is skilled at bringing it out.

“You’ve
got to have an eye for the form,” he says. “It’s
just like a painter. You’ve got to have a perception
of what this is going to look like.”

Surprisingly,
Jerry says his years in the kitchen helped prepare
him for his career as an artist.

“If you’re
a chef putting out a nice meal, 50 percent is presentation.
You’ve got to make it eye-appealing and desirable,” he
says. “It’s
the same thing with this.”

While Jerry says
he’s grateful to be making a living as
a woodturner, he’d
continue the craft even if his vessels didn’t
sell. “I’d stack
them up, give them away or burn them. I’d
still be making them,” Jerry
says, adding that he gets a great sense of satisfaction
watching an interesting shape appear out of a
spinning block of wood.

photo courtesy of Jerry Crowe

But the real reward,
he says, comes from knowing his customers appreciate
the artwork he’s made.

“What makes
me satisfied is when somebody buys a piece
and really likes it,” Jerry says. “And
then when they come back a year later or two
years later and they’re still in love
with it, that’s what’s
really rewarding.”